Its owner, a free Black cooper named Daniel Fitch, had lost his wife two winters earlier and lived with his daughter Rebecca and a nephew who was learning the trade.

Daniel listened while Sarah’s contact explained the travelers’ circumstances, then offered the rooms above the workshop for as long as they could safely stay.

Caleb carried Ruth’s bundle up the stairs and placed it beside a bed made with clean quilts.

“We can sleep here?” Ruth asked.

“That’s what he said.”

“Without somebody deciding when we wake?”

Caleb tried to smile.

“We will have work tomorrow.”

“Work is different when it isn’t enforced with a threat.”

He looked at her and knew she was right, although the distinction still felt strange.

Amos examined the cooper’s tools and immediately noticed a broken clamp beside the bench.

Daniel Fitch laughed when he saw the older carpenter’s attention.

“I was going to mend that next week.”

“It won’t last another barrel,” Amos replied.

“Then perhaps you’d like to earn supper by showing me how.”

For a moment Amos stood still, surprised that work had been offered as a choice.

Then he took the clamp in his hands and studied the crack.

“I can repair it,” he said.

“But I’ll need a wedge and two new screws.”

Daniel opened a drawer and placed the materials on the bench.

The exchange was small, but Caleb watched it with an intensity he had once reserved for a threatened punishment.

He had never seen Amos asked what he needed to do a job.

That night Ruth slept without waking at every footstep on the stairs.

Caleb lay awake listening to the cooper’s daughter reading aloud below and the creek moving past the window.

He thought of the unborn child Eleanor had used as a threat and the boy now lying ill in Hawthorne’s nursery.

He did not know whether they were connected to him by blood.

He knew that uncertainty could no longer serve as a leash.

In the morning, he asked Daniel Fitch whether he could build a cabinet with a lock that opened from either side.

“Why either side?” Daniel asked.

“Because I spent too many nights looking at doors that opened only for somebody else.”

Daniel regarded him for a moment.

“Then we’d better make a good one.”

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Messenger’s Confession

The rider who first brought Eleanor’s locket to Red Cedar returned to Hawthorne after failing to locate Caleb.